“Hang in there. It’ll be okay!”, sometimes, comforting words don’t comfort us. We know well that it won’t be okay and tomorrow will be tough as same as today. That’s why grumbling with a buddy who is in the same situation is much better than ‘not comforting’ words. The buddy silently listens to my grumbling for hours. The chill buddy just says “Hey, same as me.”, “Life is really tough.”, while listening to me silently for hours. The comforting buddy who is in the same situation, if that buddy exists, it will be one of <All That We Hope To Be> characters.

◆Friends Who Hate This World.

Every character in <All That We Hope To Be> has their stories. (I know everyone has their stories, but they are a little more miserable.) That’s why they are not positive with their situation. Their life is unanswerable, boring and desolate and flat as always. Readers feel sympathy to their ‘cut-and-dried life’.

 

“Why do I feel jealous of others’ success and blame myself?”

The young looking for their jobs must sympathize deeply with career concern. Too hard to realize the dream, you can’t do what you want to do. For ‘Tom’ and would-be painter ‘Sunny’ in <All That We Hope To Be>, dream is also a pie in the sky. Life is tough, so they just manage to live. Art study is nothing but extravagant. However, they never stop reaching out for their dream under nagging and dissuading from people around. Sometimes, they feel jealous of others’ success and depressed about their life, but they really try to push themselves to the limit.

“Hey sis, why’re we poor?”

Sister of Sunny, ‘Tiny’ is a childish high school student and doesn’t know what she wants to do. She also has no interest in studying. However, she does know what poverty is. She really knows how hard she needs to struggle for $3. Like the cut above, <All That We Hope To Be> simply shows struggling life of characters. Especially, Sunny and Tiny shows our materialistic world with very normal life where we cry or laugh because of money. Tiny takes it for granted that her sister Sunny can’t afford to buy just an ice cream. That is where reality hits us hard.

“I hate other people.”

T-cup is tiny and cute, but he never opens his mouth without swearing. The Gap between his appearance and personality makes readers love him. Different to Sunny and Tom, he is really energetic and confident. They often feel cheap and depressed about their miserable shape. Well, to him, it is nothing but gasoline for his flaming rage. He always says out loud “Hey, show me mercy of money! I am broke.”, “What did you do for my empty pocket?” and blow off steam. But he lives hard as Sunny and Tom do. He has two part-time jobs while saying every swear word in the world. He washes dishes and delivers leaflets while swearing. It looks like us. We say that we don’t want to care about assignments or works and really want to quit everything right now. Eventually, we do everything hard and well. This is where the readers feel empathy and smile.

 

◆<All That We ‘DO NOT’ Hope To Be>

They don’t give up their impossible dream while suffering from their hard life. Also, they are always pessimistic. Characters in this webtoon is what we DO NOT hope to be. That’s why the title of this webtoon, <All That We Hope To Be> is a paradox to us. But that is also why we should sympathize. In real life, ‘WE’ also reach out for our dreams and don’t settle for the present. Although the dream is a pie in the sky, we expect to be all that we ‘HOPE’. ‘WE’ in <All That We Hope To Be> do nothing for comforting ‘US’ in real life. They are too busy to grumble and swear their life. But somehow that comforts us and heal us. Their ‘talking behind life’ seems to swear our life on behalf of us. They look like us and we can find ourselves through them. We blame our world, but don’t quit and keep going hard. If you had a life counseling with T-cup, he would say “Hey, life sucks as always.” Whatever you say.